the (un)real thoughts of realbt

I found the first snow fall of the season raining upon me as I walked to the bus loop from the computer science building on campus last night. Not a little, but quite a lot. It was sticking, and also quite wet, I soon realised as I pulled out my umbrella in hopes of staying dry. Typically quiet around the science and engineering end of campus at 11pm, the snow further absorbed any noise from cars leaving the parkades and others like myself leaving labs late in the last week of the term.

Despite all the work this term has brought with my rather heavy load, I am feeling rather pleased with the progress made so far on my computer graphics project. Last night I created a spot lights in our “game” as well as implemented a vary crude shadowing algorithm. (Who knew rendering even fake shadows would be so difficult and slow.)

It seems it snowed over night. The ground is white, and traffic is no doubt a mess in the lower mainland. All the signs of the first snow fall of the season.

After an arduous week working on a (very interesting) computer science project, I came home on Wednesday night at about 11:30 to discover my closet had sprung a leak. Either something was leaking from the kitchen upstairs, or the sprinkler hose has sprung a leak. The leak was coming from the wall/ceiling inside my closet, and dripping down skipping across some clothes, and landing partially on my dresser. Most of it ended up on the carpet below, soaking it through. Thankfully the leak was only a bit of a drip, but it still managed to release quite a bit of water.

These photos above show how the leak had pulled down the paint off the wall. When the landlord’s person-who-does-things-for-him came on Wednesday night to have a look, he pulled this down, and a good lot of water came down with it. The other photo shows my dresser catching the water after my discovery.

It was left overnight to collect in a bucket after I emptied my closet. The following day, the plumber came to take a look. After tearing open the ceiling (below), it seems the source of the leak was a small hose in the fridge upstairs.

“Sam” was a true friend for nearly 6 years. A mid-level Samsung QuikLaser 6050, he was, complete with all sorts of expansion options that you don’t find in today’s economical printers. A whopping 12 MB of RAM (upgraded from 4), a real, removable paper tray, and excellent toner life. So great, in fact, that I only just replaced the toner before Sam’s untimely death. I estimate that I printed at least 5000 pages on the original toner alone — it’s quite possible that it’s closer to 8000 or even 10000. It played well with Linux; a CUPS PPD was readily available and it worked perfectly.

And then one day, Sam refused to print. He would turn on, power up, and then give up. All lights would flash and nothing would happen. He wouldn’t even muster a test page.

Sam’s replacement, Sam Jr., is a Samsung ML-1610. One of the cheapest laser printers on the market today. A whopping 2 MB of RAM, a half-assed paper tray, and a toner life comparable to inkjet cartridges (well, not quite…). No CUPS PPD is available specifically for the 1610, however the 1510 driver works sufficiently well that it’s not a problem.

Here’s to Sam, and 6 good years of quality laser printing.

This week I have been quite ill. Seems I have a bit of a strep throat, though the tests are not yet back from the lab to confirm it. All the symptoms are here, of course, and the doctor was relatively convinced (high fever, white spots in the throat, swollen lymph nodes, abdominal pain, and of course, a very sore throat). It was all quite wonderful, really.

Cracked out of my mind, I’ve fallen quite horribly behind in school. While I tried to do some work each day in between shivering from a bad fever, I didn’t get all that much accomplished.

So, falling to the lurid temptation of illness, I set out to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in its full extended edition. Nearly 12 hours of it. One per day while I was too sick to do anything else. It was bliss. What a great piece of cinematography. If only there were more of that, and less Paris Hilton slime.